


the other princess

by kyrilu



Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 13:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3412568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is crying when a girl walks up to her and offers her a crown of flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the other princess

**Author's Note:**

> This is meta disguised as fic. I’m sorry.
> 
> The chronology is off, btw. I tried to make a timeline, but had no idea what to do in regard to Becca and Claire’s ages relative to Alex’s age. I’m disregarding the handbook when it said that Portia Thorn died shortly after Vega was founded.

**1.**

She is crying when a girl walks up to her and offers her a crown of flowers. The crown is made up of intertwined red roses, and the girl looks at her solemnly and cups her wrists together. Becca’s mother had never thought much of Zachary Harwick’s teachings, but somehow this _means_ something.

Becca wipes her eyes. She straightens her shoulders. She’s the new head of her House and she knows that she has to show Vega that she’s strong, even though she still can’t get rid of the memory of the smoke that had risen from her mother’s burning body on the pyre.

“You don’t have to,” she tells the girl. “You’re the princess. Keep your crown.”

The girl shakes her head. “You’re a princess, too. That one’s for you.” She taps her own head, where a crown of purple flowers rest curled in her hair.

Becca studies the wreath, not sure what to say. It’s carefully woven and slightly small, obviously made by childish hands, but she thinks that it would fit her.

“I would’ve kept the thorns,” the girl says, with a shrug, “but Felicia--one of my House’s maids--said that you would get hurt. I hope that there isn’t any left in that one.”

Becca smiles. She says to Claire Riesen, “It’s all right. A little thorn or two won’t hurt me.”

 

**2.**

General Riesen is quick to place Becca under his tutelage. Even at her age, Becca knows that this is a clever political move. Her mother always used to tell her about the inner workings of the Council, making her learn alliances, rivalries, issues that were discussed and what stances each consul took.

Becca bears with it. It’s better than siding with Whele, who, as she gets older, starts to drop snide, bitter remarks about her mother having had ‘liaisons’ with General Riesen. Becca isn’t sure if the accusations are true or not, and she doesn’t care; if her mother ever was ‘seeing’ Edward in any capacity, it was certainly nothing serious and none of her teenage daughter’s business.

And even if it’s true--a guardianship done out of duty or sentiment--she doesn’t mind the brief flashes of genuine kindness that General Riesen offers her while he guides her through the inner workings of the Council. She’s never had a father before.

 

**3.**

“We’re an old, crabby bunch, Becca,” her mother had said to Becca, one night, when she was young. “I think the Council will continue to hold onto power for the next decade. Perhaps the one after that as well. Whele knows when to side with Edward when he knows it’s good for him, but it’s blatantly obvious that he wants to be lord of the city himself one day. They keep treading around each other, wary old dogs with their teeth bared. Our political process is stuck at the moment, stagnant--I’m perpetuating it myself by siding with Edward, unfortunately.

“But this will change. We’re not going to be around forever, girl, and I want you to know that you’re the next generation. You and Claire and that Whele boy--lord knows if he will take after his father. But you’re all going to have to make the Council work, even if it means that there’s going to be a revolution of the underclasses right outside our Houses.”

 

**4a.**

She’s thrown into the fray as soon as she takes her seat on the Senate. She’s responsible for every program that her mother has initiated, for health and education. Riesen gives her access to the books in his collection, and Becca finds herself sitting down with an old tech and building layers of GIS maps based on the data that her mother collected. She likes maps--she likes the way they look in her head, and the way you can take them apart and study them on computers. She can trace the possible lines of causation and correlation and do her best to work with them.

But working with people is a little harder, at first. Becca can hold her own in the Council and other government officials, yet she knows that she has to make public appearances herself. The city’s watching her, that little girl consul.

Claire was right; she is, from a certain point-of-view, Vega’s _other_ princess.

General Riesen helps set the stage for her, turning this into a mutual public relations event. He has the blues round up thirty-some children from the tunnels, has them fed and clothed and washed. When Becca arrives at the room set aside for them in Riesen’s House, she finds them wide-eyed and fidgeting, casting half-terrified glances at the soldiers in the room.

Some of them are her age. Some are younger, or maybe even older.

She takes a breath, and she speaks.

 

**4b.**

(Here is a brief history lesson: General Riesen threw together the V-system based on Vega’s needs for the beginning. Someday, when a newly orphaned boy is eleven years old, a woman wearing rags will look at him sympathetically, point at the walls, and say: _Those were built on our backs, child._ Vega celebrates and rewards her politicians, her agricultural engineers, her physicians, her technicians, but there are always those that she needed or needs for her tunnels, around her walls, inside her factories. They work in the mines for the silver and gold that she needs in her sleek, shining nuclear-powered machinery. They turn handles and push levers alongside her production lines for manufacturing goods.

Vega’s tops smile at them and tell them the Savior is coming.)

 

**4c.**

Becca says, firstly, that she’s here to help. Doctors will soon come into the room to offer vaccinations and basic medical care. She tells them about recent legislation she wants to run past the Senate - regulatory labor laws that, while she can’t guarantee that the clauses in regard to higher pay or shorter hours will be granted, will at least make the working conditions safer in the factories and tunnels.

If they’re not working, she can try and point them in the right direction. They can enlist in the army when they’re sixteen years of age; if they qualify and pass the rigorous training, they’ll receive pay, meals, room, and board in return for their service.

 

**4d.**

Becca sees a small head poke out by the doorway of the room. It’s Claire, who’s been listening to Becca speak, and she stares at the children with a strange, thoughtful expression. She nudges a girl’s shoulder and starts to whisper to her. Then she cups her wrists together, pulls them apart, and gently crowns the girl with the circlet of pink flowers that were on her head. Becca thinks she can catch the little girl say: _Thank you, princess._

 

**5.**

The next morning, Becca peruses through the books on Riesen’s shelves. He’s managed to salvage a large amount of books about military history; it’s difficult to sort through to find the books she wants, since his shelving methods are random and haphazard. She slips out an anatomy textbook that is sandwiched between biographies of Hannibal Barca and Scipio Africanus.

Claire’s watching her, like she usually does. She says into the silence of the library, “I’ve never seen the tunnels before. Principate Hardwick has been there before. He says it’s a sad place, and he doesn’t want to tell me everything about it because I’m too young.” She frowns, but adds, “You helped those kids yesterday. That was nice.”

Becca cracks open the anatomy textbook, then shakes her head. “I suppose. It’s my job, Claire. My mother’s job. It’s hard, but I want Vega to be a good place. It is our home.” (Claire wrinkles her nose at the page Becca has landed on, and Becca sighs and obligingly turns the page.)

“If you want it to be a good place,” Claire says, after a pause, “why do those kids still have to work? I don’t work. William doesn’t work. You do, but it’s not tunnels or factories.”

Claire Riesen is...strange, Becca thinks. But then again, she never grew up on Portia Thorn’s rambles to her daughter about the slow pace of social progress, about which way the balance of sacrifice must lie in the interim. This is Vega.

Claire abruptly disappears, but re-emerges carrying a book. “I found this a month ago. It uses a lot of big words, and I don’t get all of it. But it makes sense. The writer talks about the _sovereign_ \- it’s not supposed to be something like the Senate, or a person being a Lord of the City, but it means all the people together.”

“Democracy?” Becca asks.

“Kind of,” Claire says, with a shrug. “He actually supports the idea of a monarchy, but there has to be a ‘social contract.’” She opens the book to a bookmarked page, and reads: “ _The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before._ ”

Claire continues to read out quotes, while Becca listens, quietly, with her hand on her chin. She wonders how it will be like when Claire sits by her side on the Council. Maybe Claire’s idealism will end up as a pipe dream - maybe it’ll run into the brick wall that is David Whele. Or maybe it won’t.

 

**6.**

Becca continues to learn. She sends out the helicopters to take photographs from above to update their GIS maps. She reads and rereads through every report on the health of Vega’s citizens that has been compiled in the last few years. She comes to every meeting with her head held high, her voice strong and forceful, and every bit a consul as her mother.

Sometimes she prays. It’s Claire’s influence rubbing off at her, but she thinks she likes the idea of all of this being _over._ She agrees with her mother - and, grudgingly, with Whele - that humanity needs to play a part in saving themselves. But she would like something sure and certain, a finality of peace and stability that can’t be ensured from countless senatorial debates, arguments over budgeting, and the structuring of numerous program after program.

Principate Hardwick dies. For a moment, the city is torn between Claire or Whele’s son as potential successors, but behind the scenes, an outcome is settled, and David Whele is disgustingly ecstatic for catapulting his House’s influence even further. Becca continues to work and work.

A couple years later, there’s Michael. She’s known him for years, of course, but something changes in between.

 

**7.**

(Here’s another history lesson: The archangel Michael was always a figure that represented a degree of preternatural omnipotence that the citizens of Vega could never find in the vague spectre and prophecy of the Savior. God is gone; His angels are our enemies; there is a messiah is coming but we have no idea what he looks like and what role he’ll play; but look, _here_ , here’s a tangible being that sided with us and saved us.

They never worshipped him, but when reality comes crashing down later, Vega feels like she has lost another god.

And then there’s the carnage he left behind.)

 

**8.**

Vega is Vega, but Becca thinks that she’s happy with her life. She likes pressing her palms against the glass of the Stratosphere’s windows, feeling Michael’s mouth press kisses on her neck. She likes indulging as much as he does, reaching over to touch the other women on the bed, urgent and wanting.

She likes the tricky nature of politics, even if it’s challenging, frustrating, and still stubbornly unchanging. She likes her talks with General Riesen, over Council matters and more personal conversations, and he somehow gets her reading some of his military books.

She likes watching Claire’s services at the Church; sometimes she ends up sitting down at William Whele’s services. At both services, she always remembers what her mother said about generations, and she thinks she can remember the feeling of Claire’s flower crown on her hair.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I’ve always wondered where Claire got her sense of social justice because it’s not something that she learned from her father. I think it’s partly Claire being Claire, Saviorism (because while it is used as a sort of ‘opiate of the masses’ type of thing by Vega's Council, it does influence her charity/etc.), Claire having read up on democracy at some point, and specifically in this fic's 'verse, Becca.
> 
> 2) Speculation about General Riesen/Portia Thorn is basically me wondering about Whele’s accusation that Becca is like Portia Thorn in regard to ‘thinking with the wrong part of her anatomy.’ While it’s a certainly vile comment and could be entirely based on Whele’s bitterness over the Thorns deciding to side with Riesen and/or Michael over senatorial issues, it might have basis, especially because of the close Becca & Riesen relationship in-canon.
> 
> 3) The Hannibal Barca reference was a nod to the handbook: “Following a long Fabian retreat into southwest deserts, General Riesen executed a stunning envelopment of the massed angel army at The Battle of Hoover Dam.” Because guess what strategy the Romans used to defeat Hannibal Barca? Also, I may or may not have a headcanon that the ‘stunning envelopment’ mentioned might be based on the tactical deployments Hannibal used at the Battle of Cannae (the same tactics are also apocryphally attributed to Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama). /it’s a long story
> 
> 4) also fml i actually got sucked into reading a huge chunk of rousseau while writing this.


End file.
